April 4, 2014 - Book Review: Words of Radiance

Certain I needed to blog, I was uncertain what to blog about.  And then I realized I had not put together a review of Brandon Sanderson's latest masterpiece, Words of Radiance.

Words of Radiance is book 2 in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive.  The grand story arc starts with regular humans, and tells the story of the return of their legends.  Thousands of years ago, really bad monsters and really powerful heroes battled it out.  Then the battle ended, and we've had peace for a long time.  In book 1, ominous things start happening: a main character starts having visions, another main character gains some magical abilities, and then another one does, and then we find out that a third had them all along.  These are things lost to legends, and each person who finds that she has magical abilities is shocked by the idea.

Words of Radiance takes off exactly where Way of Kings ended.  It's a hard book to write about - the characters are well-written; the magical system is fascinating, complex, and limited; the religous, cultural, and bio diversity invented for this world is stunning.  And although Words of Radiance answers many questions, it leaves many more.

So how to write this without spoilers?  Sanderson likes to take concepts and twist them.  In Steelheart, for instance, Sanderson takes the notion of superheroes and ties it to the old adage that "absolute mpower corrupts absolutely".  Thus, his superheroes are nearly all bad guys, ruling the world as despots.  In this series (only in book 2 out of a planned 10), it seems that Sanderson is doing something similar, bringing his plot into a more realistic realm.  We met Kaladin, our first main character, at the beginning of book 1.  He has a serious personal crisis in WoR.  He is far from perfect.  Some guys we were encouraged to hate in WoK turn out to maybe have different motives than we had thought.  And we meet a group of shadowy figures in WoR that may be after the right thing but going about it in the wrong way.

These are all humans.  There are mythical creatures that may also be enemies to the humans, but the humans are so busy destroying themselves they aren't able to start to deal with the non-humans in their world.  And in addition to the known non-humans, there are legends of other, even more scary, non-humans.  In most fantasy series, there is a single Big Bad Evil Thing Rising From The Depths.  In these books, there is certainly something ominous, but the people aren't united in their opposition to it.  And we aren't even sure yet if the ominous things happening with the humans are a good thing or a bad thing.  I guess, in summary, I don't even know yet who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are.  I understand the motives of the people we first think are the good guys, but the more I meet the bad guys, the less sure I am of their badness.

Picture a mostly non-magical feudal society.  Then picture that one group of warlords gets nuclear weapons.  One group of warlords gets chemical weapons.  They both have means to deliver them sufficiently to wipe out the other.  Some want to use their new weapons, some don't want to repercussions.  It's a messy situation with no clear heroes.  And although it appears that we know who our core group of heroes is, we see some old villain characters in a new light, and realize they might not be villains after all.  And someone we thought might be a good-leaning neutral character might be anything but neutral or good.  It's fascinating to not have the answers thrown at my face, to have the chance to evaluate and pass judgment on these characters myself.

So I'm currently in my 3rd reading of book 1.  Having read book 2, it now makes much more sense.  Once I finish it, I'll read book 2 again.

At any rate - highly recommended.  Go check it out.